Physical Media might not be dead, but Physical Media in Retail Stores are accelerating the death (1 Viewer)

[jcroy]

In the end, it's a matter of finding the combination of services/products which fits into your own particular set of interests (and/or "neuroses").

 

[The Drifter]

I've never been a "background" consumer when it comes to TV. If I'm watching something, it has my undivided attention. When I realized that I was watching my DVDs way more than I was watching cable, I cut the cord. Best decision I ever made. I just did an inventory, and realized that I now have over 5,000 discs at my disposal. I love the feeling of knowing that I can watch anything I choose, anytime I want. I grew up in the "3 channel" era of TV and was totally at the mercy of the networks and local stations. The very first TV series I collected on DVD was The Twilight Zone (in those individual volumes) and I just couldn't believe that I could watch those episodes uncut and in great quality! When the entire series of Dark Shadows came along, I was floored!

Good points. I never had & never will have cable. Prior to getting my first DVD player in 2003, I didn't have a large interest in most TV shows/movies....other than seeing some films theatrically & being a fan of some TV shows back in the '80's/early '90's.

However, as I alluded to in my last post - getting my first DVD player coincided with getting interested/re-interested in TV shows. So, I just ended up buying/renting series I wanted on DVD. Not only was this more cost-effective than an expensive, monthly cable TV bill, but it was also better in that you had access to an entire season of a TV series.....as opposed to being at the mercy of wanting to watch something on cable that you had to worry about recording (if you couldn't watch it when it was aired); wanting to watch something that wasn't available on cable; watching something that would possibly be edited, have commercials, etc. Ditto for renting/buying movies as opposed to watching them on cable.

So, I've always felt & still feel that cable TV is a huge waste of money.

 

[TJPC]

In large areas of Canada, cable was the only option. I lived on the border and we had a lot of channels from the US via antenna, but I remember visiting relatives in northern Ontario (Kirkland Lake) and finding they only had 3 channels. One was English CBC, one was French CBC, and one was broadcasted by Freddy Lang who owned the local record store — he played records and had cardboard adds for local businesses as a picture. It was a revelation when they finally got cable in the 1970s.

 

[jcroy]

But subscription streaming fills that role for most people now. It allows them to watch programs on their schedule instead of a network’s. It usually allows for the option to watch commercial-free. It’s available instantly at the touch of a button. It doesn’t require waiting for, taking care of or storing physical objects. And a year of any one particular service generally costs less than a monthly cable bill, or the cost of one complete series set or three or four individual discs.

My wife and I just decided to rewatch Frasier, which we haven’t seen since it went off the air. I almost bought the complete series box set - $80 for 11 seasons is entirely reasonable in my book. And then I realized it’s on a service I already pay for. So why should I spend $80 to buy a physical object when I already have access to it? So I didn’t buy it. And the money saved by not buying it basically pays for a year of the service that I’m watching it on.

However, as I alluded to in my last post - getting my first DVD player coincided with getting interested/re-interested in TV shows. So, I just ended up buying/renting series I wanted on DVD. Not only was this more cost-effective than an expensive, monthly cable TV bill, but it was also better in that you had access to an entire season of a TV series.....as opposed to being at the mercy of watching something on cable that you had to worry about recording (if you couldn't watch it when it was aired) and/or that would possibly be edited, etc. Ditto for renting/buying movies as opposed to watching them on cable.

So, I've always felt & still feel that cable TV is a huge waste of money.

My issue isn't actually cash when it comes to tv/movies vis a vis dvd/bluray.

In spite of my ocd compulsive collecting mindset, buying a lot of dvds/blurays turns out to be one of the least expensive hobbies I've had. I've had numerous other hobbies which are a lot more cash intensive than dvd/bluray.

(Going offtopic).

With that being said, my main issue has a lot more to do with my "sanity" in the context of ocd compulsive completionist collecting type of behavior. I'm at the point in my life where I would be willing to give up everything in my collecting hobbies, and trade it all for "peace of mind" and low (or zero) anxiety.

Unfortunately the only practical way I know to achieve this, is complete utter burnout. Basically the ocd psychological equivalent of a "drug overdose".

 

[Josh Steinberg]

With respect, I would venture to guess that your specific buying habits are in a very specific niche that falls outside of most mainstream/average consumer mindset - which to be fair is probably true of most of us that care enough about physical media to post online about it.

 

[jcroy]

Definitely.

As well as "neuroses" which only affects a tiny miniscule % of the population in a very extreme manner.

 

[jcroy]

As a recent extreme niche example of this, my current interest in dvd/bluray has very little to do with watching any actual movies from such discs.

Over the past month or so (starting over the xmas break), I've been attempting to figure out how the BD+ drm on bluray discs functions by writing some code (and using other existing codebases) to figure out how it works.

(Fox was the only widely know movie company which extensively used BD+ on almost all their bluray discs from late 2007 to the end of 2017. Since then, Fox appears to have completely dropped BD+ entirely since December 2017).

 

[The Drifter]

The thing is, if you have 500 discs and 20 go bad, statistically that’s not terrible. But if those 20 include a single disc out of a big set, or an out of print title, that suddenly becomes a bigger problem.

Good point. I have a ton of Disks (both DVD & Blu) that I haven't even played yet and/or that I haven't re-watched in years. I suspect I may find issues playing back at least some of them - when I get to them, that is. If that is the case, I plan to recycle the non-working disks...some Best Buys (and possibly other places) have bins in the front of the store where you can put scratched/non-working/expired digital copies of DVD's/Blu's/CD's.

 

[jcroy]

Good point. I have a ton of Disks (both DVD & Blu) that I haven't even played yet and/or that I haven't re-watched in years. I suspect I may find issues playing back at least some of them - when I get to them, that is. If that is the case, I plan to recycle the non-working disks...some Best Buys (and possibly other places) have bins in the front of the store where you can put scratched/non-working/expired digital copies of DVD's/Blu's/CD's.

As mentioned in an earlier post, a slightly problematic disc might have skipping, freezing, pixelation, etc ... problems on one player, while it plays fine on another player with no issues.

The final arbriter I use to decide whether a particular is disc is bad beyond repair, is if none of my computer dvd-r drives can read the disc in its entirety. I have over a dozen old computer dvd-r drives models of various vintages and firmware revisions, which I can swap in/out when required.

I've had cd/dvd discs which wouldn't play properly on one dvdr drive, but another drive ripped the disc with no problems at all. Basically each computer dvdr drive has its own reading algorithm and error correction methods, which may differ slightly from other dvdr drives made by another manufacturer.

 

[jcroy]

(Going back slightly further in time).

Most of my procedures for dealing with dvd discs, goes back to the days when I was hardcore into ripping audio cd discs. Anybody who was hardcore into that niche back in the 2000s era decade, knows very well of the many vagarities and strengths of numerous different cdr/dvdr drives from different manufacturers.

Basically the red book audio cd standard was originally designed back in the 1970s, and was designed primarily for music playback and not data integrity. These limitations were easily seen once computer cdrom drives first started appearing on the general market in the 1990s.

By the time dvd was designed in the mid-1990s, the original design engineers knew all about the problems and limitations of the old cd and cdrom formats.

 

[The Drifter]

As mentioned in an earlier post, a slightly problematic disc might have skipping, freezing, pixelation, etc ... problems on one player, while it plays fine on another player with no issues.

Good points. However, I only really have 1 Blu player I use to watch disks, and if they don't work on that I'm getting rid of the Disks (unless the problem is with the Blu player itself, which has also happened & which is another issue). I do also have a regular DVD player in my computer (tower), but I never watch anything on that anymore.

The same holds true for Music CD's. I'm a dinosaur (ha ha), and still listen to them in my car's player - when I drive is the only real time I take to listen to music. And, if the CD "skips" in that player, I'm getting rid of the CD....unless I determine it's the player itself (which I don't think is the case, at least not yet). I used to have a stand-alone CD/dual-tape deck "boombox", but that crapped out about 5 years ago & I don't plan on replacing that - especially since I barely used this.

 

[jcroy]

The same holds true for Music CD's. I'm a dinosaur (ha ha), and still listen to CD's in my car's CD player - when I drive is the only real time I take to listen to music.

I did the same thing with my previous cars, which were models from the 2000s decade.

A few years ago when I got a new car and junked the previous one (with a cd player), the new car didn't have any cd player at all. The only way I could play any music in this new car, was by plugging in a flash drive into the usb port on the front panel of the car stereo.

 

[BobO'Link]

A few years ago when I got a new car and junked the previous one (with a cd player), the new car didn't have any cd player at all. The only way I could play any music in this new car, was by plugging in a flash drive into the usb port on the front panel of the car stereo.

That very thing was what prompted me to finally rip my collection to FLAC. I "needed" them for the car (I absolutely do not like being stuck with just the radio and found Sirius XM to be even worse). Of course I discover the player, while it will play FLAC, doesn't have a clue how to handle gapless playback. That necessitates re-ripping some tracks just for the car as a gap in a segue is not acceptable.

The dealership couldn't tell me if there was a CD option for the model I wanted (seriously?!? - when there's such an option one model up?!? - and looks like the same form factor) so I contacted the manufacturer - who referred me back to the dealership! - the one who had no clue themselves! I decided to not hassle with it and just went for the default. 3 months later I completed the project.

 

[jcroy]

That very thing was what prompted me to finally rip my collection to FLAC. I "needed" them for the car (I absolutely do not like being stuck with just the radio and found Sirius XM to be even worse).

Currently I hardly ever use the car stereo to play my own music.

I just tune to a local OTA fm station playing music I am not familiar with. For example, fm radio stations which play rap/hiphop, country, dance music, etc ....

I purposely avoid local stations playing music I am familiar with, such as rock, classical, alternative, talk/poltics, etc ... Apparently I find it extremely distracting while driving.

 

[jcroy]

Of course I discover the player, while it will play FLAC, doesn't have a clue how to handle gapless playback. That necessitates re-ripping some tracks just for the car as a gap in a segue is not acceptable.

My car stereo can actually play *.wav files, even though it is not mentioned at all in any manuals.

The few times I bother to listen to my own music in the car, I just play a *.wav rip of several cds from start to finish. No need for any cues sheets for gaps, etc ...

Though this only really works for albums where I like every song, where I can just listen to the album from start to finish without fastfowarding/rewinding. For example, such as many Rush and Black Sabbath albums from the 70s and early 80s.

 

[jcroy]

(To be more specific).

These *.wav cd rips are done using EAC. Basically the Action->Copy Range function, where I just copy all the sectors from 0 to the end final sector, in a blind "bulldozing" manner.

So these 40+ minutes album rips are these giant 400-500+ megabtyes sized *.wav files.

 

[Thomas Newton]

I'm a dinosaur (ha ha), and still listen to them in my car's player - when I drive is the only real time I take to listen to music. And, if the CD "skips" in that player, I'm getting rid of the CD....unless I determine it's the player itself (which I don't think is the case, at least not yet).

You can sometimes rescue scratched CDs by gently washing them in a dilute solution of dish washing liquid and water, rinsing them off, and then letting them dry thoroughly. Of course, it's better to keep them from getting scratched in the first place.

 

[TJPC]

The great thing about a CD player in the car is you can play your music directly instead of having to rip them to iTunes or a flash drive. CDs are also far easier to change as you drive. Trying to pick a song or album from your iPhone connected to your dashboard is the definition of distracted driving.

 

[jcroy]

You can sometimes rescue scratched CDs by gently washing them in a dilute solution of dish washing liquid and water, rinsing them off, and then letting them dry thoroughly. Of course, it's better to keep them from getting scratched in the first place.

This only works if it is surface damage from scratches and/or junk on the surface, such as dust, peanut butter, grease, fingerprints, etc ...


It is a whole entirely different story if the damage is in the resin layers, and/or from "rot".

 

[Bryan^H]

I once looked into a disc machine that removes scratches. $4,000.

No thank you.